Algerian soldiers once more killed Mauritanian miners and confiscated their property. Only one of them managed to return to Mauritania.
Friday, the border between Algeria and Mauritania saw the death of 2 Mauritanian gold miners who entered Algerian territory illegally when they did not know where the exact borders were.
Once once more, the Mauritanians were unlucky and were assailed by the army on the Algerian borders without warning shots, and without any mercy.
An injured man managed to avoid the worst and return to Mauritanian territory, Mauritanian media reported, while the official authorities have not (yet) reacted.
The all-terrain vehicles of the two gold panners killed were seized by the Algerian army. Algerian border agents are used to killing Mauritanian miners to confiscate their loot and equipment. Everything goes there, the fuel, the computers, the mineral detectors and the gold they find.
This tragic killing, however, comes just following the meeting of the Joint Algerian-Mauritanian Border Security Commission at the end of January, which saw the participants agree on “the intensification of security coordination between the two countries”.
Obviously, no coordination took place between the two countries before killing the Mauritanians. The Algerian authorities might have simply arrested them instead of shooting at close range.